Demeter Interfaces: Adaptive Programming Without Surprises

Adaptive Programming (AP) allows for the separate definition of data structures and traversals with attached computations, performed during the traversal, that operate on these data structures. The loosely defined contexts, structure and computation, are composed according to a given traversal specification. Traversal specifications are defined against a graph-based model of the underlystructure with the ability to abstract over graph node names, edges and subpaths. As such certain modifications to the data structure can be made without altering the programs overall behavior. The program adapts, or more precisely the computation can withstand, modifications to its underlying data structure. Currently AP systems, i.e. DAJ, provide no mechanisms to warn or even guard against modifications that will affect the meaning of a program. Programmers have to depend on thorough (or even exhaustive) testing in order to detect such modifications. In this paper we present Demeter Interfaces, through...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: ECOOP
• Authors: Therapon Skotiniotis, Jeffrey Palm, Karl J. Lieberherr
• Keywords: Data Structure, Demeter Interfaces, ECOOP 2006, Programming Languages, Underlying Data Structure